Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Meat Labs Pursue a Once-Impossible Goal: Kosher Bacon

Rabbi
Gavriel Price is in charge of figuring out how the Orthodox Union, the
largest kosher certifying organization in the world, should deal with
meat that is grown in laboratories from animal cells.CreditCreditMark Abramson for The New York Times

BERKELEY,
Calif. — Rabbi Gavriel Price has thousands of years of Jewish religious
law to draw on when he is on the job, determining whether a new food
item can get a kosher certification from his organization, the Orthodox
Union.

But all the rules about meat
and milk, and the prohibitions on eating pork and sciatic nerves, are of
limited use for Rabbi Price’s latest assignment.

The rabbi is in charge of figuring out how the Orthodox Union,
the largest kosher certifying organization in the world, should deal
with what is known as clean meat — meat that is grown in laboratories
from animal cells. This brings him in touch with a possibility for
Jewish cuisine that had previously seemed impossible: kosher bacon.

Clean
meat is still not available in stores, but start-ups working on it say
it could be by next year. When it is, they want a kosher stamp on their
product, which indicates it adheres to quality and preparation standards
and follows a set of biblical laws. That brought Rabbi Price, a tall,
lanky father of eight, to Berkeley recently, to meet with companies in
the business.

Clean
meat, also known by names like cell-based agriculture, begins with
cells taken from an animal, often stem cells that are primed to grow.
Once these cells are isolated, they are put into a solution that mimics
blood and encourages the cells to replicate.

This process is very new. The first hamburger produced in a lab was served with great fanfare in 2013 and cost $325,000. But the number of companies competing to create the first commercially available product is growing rapidly.

Rabbi
Price’s investigation touches on questions that anyone might have when
confronted with clean meat. What exactly is it? And should we want to
eat it someday?

Viktor
Maciag, who works for the start-up Mission Barns, with flasks
containing cell cultures. The Mission Barns laboratory is growing duck,
chicken and pig meat.CreditJim McAuley for The New York Times

His
first stop was a lab operated by Mission Barns, a start-up with six
employees and millions of dollars in funding. It is growing duck,
chicken and pig meat in clear flasks, lined up inside
temperature-controlled incubators.

He
looked through a microscope at a dish of long, pointy duck cells and
peppered the scientists with basic questions about where the cells had
come from, and what was in the red liquid that was helping the cells to
replicate and grow.

“I’d like to spend
more time, because I think it’s an important process to understand in a
deep way, and there’s no precedent for it really,” Rabbi Price said
after the tour.

The issue he is
addressing is much more complicated than the kosher designation of
plant-based meat substitutes already available in grocery stores.

Perhaps the best known company of its kind, Impossible Foods, has created a burger
that is made from all-vegetarian ingredients but tastes more like meat
thanks to a chemical process involving yeast and soy. Like most
vegetarian foods, these burgers have received a kosher stamp.

Mission
Barns, the start-up in Berkeley, is focused on creating animal fat,
where much of the distinctive flavor of meat resides. It recently mixed
the fat with other ingredients to create duck sausages that it served to
investors and employees. Creating more structured meat products, like a
duck breast or a steak, is expected to take much longer.

Environmentalists
and animal activists are proponents of the technology because it could
produce the flavor of hamburgers and sausages without the greenhouse
gases and animal suffering of the factory farming system.

“I’m
extremely excited about it,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, who leads the
kosher certifying division of the Orthodox Union. “The impact for us
will be very profound, in terms of the economics of kosher meat.”

There
are polls that show that many Americans are turned off by the prospect
of lab-grown meat. And the technology has already generated questions
far beyond the Jewish community.

The
United States Cattlemen’s Association requested this year that American
authorities allow the meat label only on products that come from
slaughtered animals. While large meat companies have pushed back against
the cattle ranchers, in part because they are developing their own
clean meat products, it is unclear if regulators will handle lab-grown
meat with the same rules they use for traditional meat.

Jewish authorities have been studying this because several synthetic meat start-ups are based in Israel.

A number of Israeli rabbis told one start-up,
SuperMeat, that previous rulings in religious law might allow clean
meat to be categorized as pareve, a religious label that is applied to
things that are kosher but not derived from animals.

A
pareve label would mean that observant Jews could eat it with dairy
products, like cheese, which cannot be eaten with traditional meat. In
other words, a kosher cheeseburger might be possible.

Rabbi Genack, Rabbi Price’s boss at the Orthodox Union, initially thought
clean meat could be pareve, based on his belief that clean meat was
created from an animal’s genetic code. But because the process involves
an animal cell, replicating itself millions of times, he now believes
the product should be thought of as meat.

Mr. Shahrokhi prepares feedstock for the growing cells.CreditJim McAuley for The New York Times

He wanted to be sure, for instance, that the
pork cells growing in one incubator never come into contact with the
duck cells in the incubator next to it, and that the centrifuge where
the meat cells are processed is cleaned thoroughly between processing.

He
also wanted to know if the cells in the flasks changed as they
replicated, to be sure that they do not morph into something that no
longer resembles the original animal cells.

“The
identity of a given cell, and ensuring that its identity is preserved
and verifiable, would be crucial to our being able to certify a
product,” the rabbi said.

The day after his visit to Mission Barns, Rabbi Price attended a conference held by the Good Food Institute, an organization that is encouraging the move away from animal meat.

He
dived into long conversations with people working for the food
start-ups. They discussed topics as diverse as the kosher status of
gelatin, the religious rulings of venerated medieval rabbis and the
ingredients of the solution that encourages lab-grown meat to grow.

“Does
that cell need to consume all kosher ingredients for it to be kosher?”
the rabbi was asked by Aryé Elfenbein, the founder of Wild Type, a start-up in San Francisco that is focused on lab-grown salmon.

The
rabbi explained that just as kosher cows can eat non-kosher insects, he
is working from the assumption that the growth solution will not have
to be certified as kosher as long as it is cleaned from the surface of
the final cells.

Flasks
of cell culture media at the Mission Barns lab. When Rabbi Price
visited the lab, he wanted to know if the cells in the flasks changed as
they replicated, to be sure that they don’t morph into something that
no longer resembles the original animal cells.CreditJim McAuley for The New York Times

Many
of the questions came back to the original cells that go into the
solution. The rabbi said those cells would have to be kosher, from an
animal that was properly slaughtered and not scraped off a live animal.
(There is a Jewish law against eating live animals.)

This
was not well received by some of the clean meat companies, which want
to produce something that does not involve killing any animals.

The
liveliest conversation grew out of research that is looking into
whether clean meat might be derived from cells in animal saliva or hair.

The
rabbi said those substances are not meat, so they might be used to
produce clean meat that would not be categorized as meat by Jewish law.

Eitan
Fischer, the chief executive of Mission Barns, said he was hopeful that
through some creative chemistry, his company could grow pork that would
get a kosher designation.

“If
we can create kosher bacon one day, as weird as that sounds, I think
there is going to be so much excitement around that,” he said.

Rabbi
Price was cautious. In addition to the kosher laws, there are Jewish
rules that warn against doing anything that would make people look as
though they were violating the rules.

The
rabbi added that there are religious texts that discuss the possibility
of kosher pigs, once the Jewish messiah arrives and ushers in an age of
universal peace. But he is skeptical.

“I’m looking around, and I don’t see much evidence we are in messianic times,” he said.

Tendler-Like Teacher Says He Only Pursued Students After School!

World's Greatest Criminal Mugshots!

If Your Child Gets Raped - Go First To Your Rabbi - די באַסטערדז!

For My Israeli Readers! צפייה ביקורתית של יהדות אורתודוקסית

CLICK!

Mazel Tov - Rabbi Hershel Schachter!

CLICK ABOVE PHOTO! Rabbi Moshe Feinstein states the very marriage of a gentile woman to a non observant Jew, is equivalent to an open declaration that she will not observe the precepts. This is so, because it is highly unlikely that the gentile member of such a union, will be more committed to Judaism than her remiss Jewish husband (certainly when they are living together prior to their marriage). Unlike mental or tacit negations, explains Rav Feinstein, open declarations do invalidate conversions. When such cases appear before a rabbinical court, its members actually become witnesses to an acceptance declaration that is not sincere. Therefore, it is no longer a tacit insincerity, but rather an obvious one. As such, they are forbidden to sanction the conversion. Regardless of what this Jewish court may declare, the conversion is invalid and the person is not deemed a member of the Jewish nation. In Iggros Moshe, Letters of Moshe (Yoreh De’ah, no. 157), he writes that “According to the Law, it is certain that one who converts for the sake of marriage, does not intend to keep the commandments, and is not a proselyte at all.”

The Tendler Disease in the News - Again!

CLICK!

Child Molestor is Castrated in Plea Deal!

CLICK ON CUT 'EM OFF TENDLER!

We Are In A Time When The Sheep May No Longer Trust The Shepherds!

CLICK!

Tendler Country - Ex - High School Principal Gets 8 Years For Molesting Students!

New Square Appoints Vaad To Deal With Sexual Abuse!

Lakewood Kollel Opens In Senegal!

Scandals Tests Trust in Leadership!

Rabbi Matt Salomon Offers The Pope His Help!

CLICK ON PHOTO!

Oy! Does He Have A Headache!

CLICK ON YOSEL!

Child Abuse - Chipping Away At The Wall Of Silence!

CLICK ON BRIDGE - FOR SALE AT THE AGUDATH ISRAEL!

Rav Yosef Blau Shlita

***CLICK ON PHOTO!*** "Batei Din in our times are not effective in dealing with criminal behavior. Lacking the investigative arm of the police and having restrictive standards of testimony they can not establish guilt. When the culprit is charismatic, he can often get protégés who feel indebted to him to lie to the Beis Din. It takes years before those who have been abused as youngsters to openly face their abuser."

Kolko's Office Sign - Auctioned On eBay!

I'm a bit concerned about Ehud - he can't seem to keep his hands off of me!

Ehud asked me to pardon him!

Looks like George has been hangin' with Bill Clinton!

I look into your eyes --- and I see a rotten crook!

Did you hear the one about the rabbi & the priest? Rabbi Kolko penetrated the priest (oh father)...